18th Amendment

[niazikhan2]

By Rauf Klasra

ISLAMABAD: President General Ziaul Haq will be deleted from Pakistan’s constitutional history when the 18th Amendment, to be moved in parliament in a few days, is passed.

A new history is being written by our politicians as ruthless military dictator General Ziaul Haq will be stripped of his title of President of Pakistan, 22 years after his death in a plane crash. General Zia’s election as the president of Pakistan through his infamous presidential referendum of December 19, 1984, will be deleted from the pages of the Constitution.

The ironic part of this unprecedented move is that a large number of parliamentarians sitting in the lower and upper houses were part of the Majlis-e-Shoora of General Zia and had greatly helped him win the referendum. They would now vote against their own actions of the past to strip him of the title of the President of Pakistan.

After this passage of the new amendment, General Zia would be remembered in the Constitution and political history of the country only as General Ziaul Haq, not the president of Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat and their political lieutenants, who had played an important role in the victory of General Zia in his presidential referendum of 1984, will now vote in favour of deleting their one time benefactor from the pages of the Constitution.

According to the available copy of the proposed amendments to be laid down in the lower house, Article 41 which was added in the Constitution of 1973 at the behest of General Zia in 1985 by the then assembly is now being changed. Clause 7 of Article 41 is being deleted to strip Zia of his title of the president. After holding the referendum in 1984, one year before the general election of 1985, Zia had got himself declared as the president of the country.